Michele Abramowitz works on both sides of an unprimed surface
to distort spatial relationships in the picture plane, highlighting
the indivisibility of material and image in painting. In other words,
her figures exist, and can only exist, because of the permeability
of the surface. Furthermore, her figures are contorted to fit the
painting—defined and confined by its edges. Abramowitz does
not depict worlds the viewer looks into, but rather (secularly)
transubstantiates the medium’s material of paint, surface, and
support into figures. By integrating the figures into the painted